Abstract: All primates, including, of course, humans, have evolved to have forward-facing eyes; each eye sees almost the same view of the world. By giving up the view of possible predators approaching from behind, our species gained highly precise stereopsis. The median stereoacuity for college students is 12 (Coutant & Westheimer,1992); it is roughly half this value for practiced subjects... More >

Growing up in a harsh environment has a major impact on cognition. People from such environments tend to score lower on a variety of cognitive tests. The predominant view in psychology is, therefore, that chronic exposure to harsh conditions impairs cognition. I have recently challenged this consensus by proposing that harsh environments do not exclusively impair cognition. Rather, people also... More >

Recent technological progress has dramatically increased our access to the neural activity underlying memory-related tasks. These complex high-dimensional data call for theories that allow us to identify signatures of collective activity in the networks that are crucial for the emergence of cognitive functions. As an example, we study the neural activity in dorsal hippocampus as a mouse runs... More >

Abstract: Falls are common and represent a very serious health risk for older people. They are not random events as falls are linked to a range of intrinsic and extrinsic risk factors. Vision provides a significant input to postural control in addition to providing information about the size and position of hazards and obstacles in the travel pathway and allows us to safely negotiate steps and... More >

How do brain mechanisms develop from childhood to adulthood? There is extensive debate if brain development is due to pruning of excess neurons, synapses, and connections, leading to reduction of responses to irrelevant stimuli, or if development is associated with growth of dendritic arbors, synapses, and myelination leading to increased responses and selectivity to relevant stimuli. Our... More >

How do brain mechanisms develop from childhood to adulthood? There is extensive debate if brain development is due to pruning of excess neurons, synapses, and connections, leading to reduction of responses to irrelevant stimuli, or if development is associated with growth of dendritic arbors, synapses, and myelination leading to increased responses and selectivity to relevant stimuli. Our... More >

Abstract: Nanoscale alignment of molecules, or molecular order, underpins the directed functions of cells. Cells have the fascinating capacity of creating and sustaining molecular order at the expense of chemical energy, as illustrated by the planar organization of the lipid membrane and the three-dimensional organization of chromatin, cytoskeleton, and extracellular matrix. The molecular order... More >

Layer-dependent fMRI allows measurements of information flow in cortical circuits, as afferent and efferent connections terminate in different cortical layers.
However, conventional high-resolution fMRI is challenged by its reactively high noise level and limited localization specificity of large draining veins.
In this presentation, I will discuss some recent methodological advancements of... More >